Dear Chemistry Alumni and Friends,

It has been another busy and very successful year in the department.  We are now the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, reflecting the increased importance of chemistry at the interface of life sciences.  In addition to the more traditional BA, BS and MS degrees in chemistry, we offer a BS degree in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry.  In their annual survey of chemistry departments, the American Chemical Society, our accrediting agency, reported that UNCW ranked 20th in the nation (3rd in the UNC system) in the number of certified BS chemistry graduates (23) in the 2003-2004 academic year.  That same year we were 2nd in the UNC system in MS degrees awarded (13), and our numbers continue to impress.  This past academic year we awarded 46 undergraduate degrees (21 BA and 25 BS).An additional 14 students earned MS degrees this year.

After chairing the department for five of its most productive years, Dick Ward stepped down in June, 2005, turning the reins over to Jimmy Reeves.  Dr. Reeves is working on a number of initiatives designed to provide continued and increased support for the research that faculty carry out with our students.  These include a new graduate distance learning option by which employees from participating companies can earn a Masters Degree in Chemistry, a five-year Masters option for chemistry majors who achieve a 3.5 or better grade point average through their Junior year, a proposal to the National Science Foundation to fund the purchase of a 500 MHz NMR, and efforts to fund additional scholarships and awards to support student research.

This year signals the completion of phased retirement (half-time teaching for half pay) for two long-time chemistry faculty: Yousry Sayed (in the department since 1976) and Jack Levy (1968), and the beginning of phased retirement for Jack Manock (1984).  Former department chair Bill Cooper (1996) left us this summer to head the Urban Water Research Center and be a professor of environmental engineering at the University of California, Irvine.  We wish Bill the best of luck in his new endeavor. With these retirements comes the challenge of finding new faculty.  We are proud to announce that we have filled a new position provided by the College of Arts and Sciences.  Dr Antje Pokorny Almeida has accepted the position of Assistant Professor beginning in the Fall semester.  Dr. Almeida has compiled an outstanding research record which includes significant work done here at UNCW.  She has also served as a part-time instructor, where she received excellent teaching evaluations, and developed our new Forensic Chemistry Course which includes a three hour laboratory.  It is fast becoming one of our most popular courses.   We will be seeking two new tenure track faculty this fall to replace Drs Levy and Cooper.

This past spring semester marks the successful completion of our first totally on-line graduate course.  John Tyrell coordinates the department’s efforts working with companies in the region to enable their employees to obtain an MS in chemistry through distance learning.  Plans for next year include three on-line graduate level courses: Industrial & Polymer Chemistry, Advanced Organic Chemistry, both to be taught by John, and Advanced Physical Chemistry, which will be taught by Jimmy Reeves.  These courses are also available for students to take on a non-degree seeking basis.  Contact the department if you have an interest in taking any of these courses, or investigating the possibility of your company joining the program.

Bob Kieber continued his research as part of the Marine Atmospheric Chemistry Research Laboratory (MACRL) team investigating air-sea exchange processes especially as they relate to global warming issues, trace metal speciation in estuarine and atmospheric waters, and photochemically mediated processes and their impact on environmental systems.   Some of the most recent studies have focused on the biogeochemical cycling of highly toxic compounds such as mercury and domoic acid in the coastal ocean. These National Science Foundation funded research projects were done in collaboration with five undergraduate students, eight master's students and three post-doctoral fellows.  The data from these activities have resulted in several presentations at national and international meetings as well as six publications in a variety of scientific journals most of which have students as co-authors.

Mike Messina is continuing his quest to understand the dynamics of the universe one molecule at a time.  His research group has included five honors and three DIS students in the past year.  This research has resulted in publications in the Journal of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Chemical Physics Letters, and the Journal of Chemical Education.

Brooks Avery, who also earned an MS at UNCW, has been continuing his research on organic carbon transformations and global carbon fluxes. The Corp of Engineer funded project continues to provide insight into the effects of sea level rise on carbon storage in wetland sediments and background information for student research. Brooks has three papers are currently in various stages of publication.  This past year, a paper describing controls on hydrogen peroxide variations in the Atlantic off of Bermuda was published as well as a paper describing rain organic acid variations as a function of air mass back trajectory.  A paper describing rain fluxes of incompletely combusted fossil fuels using 14C and 13C isotopic characterization of organic carbon is in review.  This summer plans are to submit to NSF a mercury cycling proposal and a proposal to study the isotopic composition of humic substances in rain.  

Ned Martin has been involved in collaboration with students and faculty in the Department of Computer Science on a two-year project to develop grid computing applications.  This effort has been designed to provide researchers with access to remote high speed computers following the close of the North Carolina Supercomputing Center three years ago. Chemistry students have also helped test the new grid middleware, called GridNexus. In addition to that effort, Ned has continued his computational research into through-space (as opposed to through-bond) NMR shielding effects.  This work is funded by the American Chemical Society through the Petroleum Research Fund. Ned will be on research reassignment in the fall, traveling around the country meeting with authors of spectroscopy textbooks to discuss how his research results might change the way they present certain aspects of NMR.

Steve Skrabal continued an active research program with his students and colleagues in the Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratory (MACRL).  Published papers this past year included studies of sediment-water exchange of Zn-complexing ligands in the Cape Fear estuary; photochemical studies involving degradation of Cu-complexing ligands and of the marine toxin, domoic acid; and a report on Fe(II) complexation in rainwater.  Several graduate and undergraduate students are involved in ongoing studies of the behavior of Hg in estuaries and rainwater, and the application of solid-state microelectrodes to probe sediment biogeochemistry.

Rob Hancock’s group, consisting of 7 MS students over the last year, continued their research on a new class of ligand complexes with metal ions, which have possible interesting medical applications. The group had 7 papers published over the last year, most with student co-authors. The group attended the SERMACS conference in Memphis TN in 2005, where all presented posters and Rob gave an oral presentation on the group’s work. Rob also delivered invited lectures at several universities, and has been invited to deliver a Keynote lecture at the 37th International Conference on Coordination Chemistry in Cape Town, South Africa, in August.

Dan Baden’s group at the Center for Marine Science, where Dan serves as Director, ha s continued their work into the causes of respiratory distress associated with Florida red tides.  Their most recent efforts have revealed chemicals within the red tide that provide therapeutic benefit to people poisoned by inhaling red tide particles. Therapeutic compounds have also been produced by making synthetic derivatives of the toxins themselves.  Current work centers on learning the molecular mechanism by which the therapeutic materials counteract the effects of the toxic brevetoxins produced by Florida red tide.  The work has just been competitively renewed by NIH for a second 5 years.  From the first five years of work, over 80 publications in all varieties of scientific journals have appeared.  Most notable were printed materials in Nature, Science News, and a monograph in Environmental Health Perspectives.

Chris Halkides is continuing studies in two areas:  chemical modification of proteins and synthesis of enzyme inhibitors.

Cecilia Kieber supervised twelve new laboratory teaching assistants who began graduate study with the department this year.  She hosted workshops and weekly meetings to help these students learn effective teaching and management strategies in their new role as instructors.  Mrs. Kieber continues to create new lab practical activities for the general chemistry labs and has presented her work at the 18th Biennial ChemEd Conference and at the ACS PacifiChem conference.  She supervised several DIS projects while developing many of the experiments for the new forensic chemistry class. 

The primary focus of Pam Seaton’s research is structure elucidation of natural and synthetic products using 1D and 2D NMR techniques.  Her natural products research continues with isolation, purification and structure determination of bioactive products isolated from terrestrial plants and marine organisms.  Isolation of bioactive lipids from marine plants and fish has led to research projects involving analysis and synthesis of glycerol- and sphingolipid analogs and has been the focus of several graduate student projects.  Synthesis of an indole natural product isolated from a local plant was the focus of an Honor’s project and has led to very interesting findings concerning the NMR behavior of indole containing compounds.  Synthesis of other heterocyclic aromatic compounds by numerous undergraduate and graduate researchers has provided many new compounds for NMR studies. 

Joan Willey and The Marine and Atmospheric Chemistry Research Laboratory (affectionately known as MACRL) have made significant progress this year, with many enthusiastic students working in the lab. One active area of research is the redox speciation of trace metals in rainwater, with a current emphasis on mercury speciation. Rainwater research has been conducted at UNCW since 1985. This twenty year record now allows analysis of trends in rainwater composition. Rainwater today is only half as acidic as it was twenty years ago. A national rainwater database indicates this change has occurred nationwide, and reflects in part implementation of better pollution controls. This work has been submitted for publication.  Dr. Willey talked about this research in an interview with Wilmington’s public radio station WHQR in October of 2005. In addition to teaching chemical oceanography and aquatic chemistry, Dr. Willey teaches an introduction to research course for undergraduates, and she taught the marine science seminar course for graduate students this spring.

Sridhar Varadarajan continues to actively involve undergraduates in his work on the design of DNA-damaging compounds targeting specific cells. Of the five students who worked with him and graduated last year, four have gone on to graduate school, and one is working at PPD. 

Dick Ward, in collaboration with Jimmy Reeves (Chemistry), Gabriel Lugo (Mathematics), Russ Herman (Mathematics), and Ron Vetter (Computer Science), is working with a grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the use of Tablet PCs and a Virtual Learning Community to improve learning in chemistry and mathematics. During the spring semester, a select group of students participated in special sections of general chemistry and calculus in which they used state-of-the-art hardware and collaboration software to take notes, acquire and analyze lab data, submit reports and assignments online, and work in groups both face-to-face and online to complete assignments.

Bart Jones continued his collaborative research with Professors Kieber and Seaton to develop a method to analyze methanol and ethanol in aqueous environmental samples. Dr. Jones has also continued collaborative research with Professor Hancock which has resulted in four publications in the last year. In the teaching arena, Dr. Jones has developed an extensive web site for the Instrumental Analysis class and reworked the Inorganic laboratory website.    

Jack Manock will begin phased-retirement next Fall Semester after 22 years at UNCW.   Dr. Manock came to UNCW from Western Carolina University in 1984 as Director for Research Administration and Professor of Chemistry.  He started teaching freshmen chemistry and physical chemistry in 1990 and returned to the department full-time in 1995.  Since returning to the department he has been active in establishing a research program in marine ecotoxicology, directing graduate and undergraduate students, and also teaching environmental chemistry and physical chemistry laboratory.  During the last ten years, Dr. Manock has directed three M.S. students, and over thirty undergraduate DIS and Honors students in research projects related to marine ecotoxicology.  During the period 1997 – 2004, Dr. Manock taught a marine ecotoxicology course to international students each summer at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research.  This spring he participated in teaching a course entitled “Ecological Risk Characterization for Coral Reefs,” at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.  The course was attended by nineteen participants from fourteen different countries.

Paulo Almeida and Antje Almeida have continued their research, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), on interactions between amphipathic peptides and lipid model membranes.  Work on lipid membrane domains, funded by Research Corporation, also continues. In addition, a project involving a collaboration between Paulo and Anne Hinderliter at North Dakota State University NDSU on annexin interaction with membranes, also funded by NIH, is continuing.

Heather McCreery continues to supervise the Organic Chemistry laboratories.  Heather earned both her B.S. in Chemistry (1997) and M.S. in Chemistry (1999) at UNCW.  She works very hard to coordinate the laboratory with the lecture material in an effort to make a very challenging course more enjoyable for the students.  Heather has developed and optimized several new and existing experiments, attempting to incorporate more environmentally friendly Green Chemistry into the laboratory.

Jeffrey Wright, in collaboration with Daniel Baden and Carmelo Tomas at the Center for marine Science (CMS), recently received a grant from the National Institutes of Health and  the National Institute of General Medical Science to produce a library of natural products derived from marine phytoplankton. Nearing the end of its first year of funding, this grant will lead to the purification of approximately 100 compounds on the 10 mg scale.  Additional research by visiting scientist Masayuki Satake from Tohoku University, Japan, has led to the identification and purification of new and unusual haemolytic lipids from the microalga Prymnesium parvum.  Dr. Satake has also identified two new polyethers from the dinoflagellate Karenia brevis.